Google's "AI Overview" as Proprietary Censorship Engine and Gatekeeper
It seems both timely and relevant that Daniel Pocock (in mainstream media yesterday) points out how bad Google Search became. "Don't forget the distorted search results from Google. They are currently showing people a mixed bag of links to random articles and photos unrelated to the current campaign," he wrote. Google basically helps Nigel Farage by boosting mindless clickbait (something I've covered a lot in my personal blog). For relevant searches it returns nonsense.
Pocock has long been a critic of Google (he was in Google Summer of Code as a tutor). That's part of the reason he gets in trouble and is maligned by the Google-funded Debian and Google-funded fake 'FSF' (which calls itself "FSFE").
Similarly he has just complained about Google slop missing stories or trying to discredit them. For example, it tries to discredit the documented fact of EPO Cocainegate. This is not intelligence, it is a coverup.
Please do not rely on Google's slop (Bard, Gemini, Overview or whatever Google chooses to call it next year). People do not choose to use this, Google is just shoving that in people's faces, encouraging laziness and misinformation.
There are many other problems with Google. "Google's style of SEO has contributed to the race to the bottom," an associate has explained this morning. "If they gave elevated visibility to valid, well-formed pages, there'd quickly be a feedback loop in a positive direction." █